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Sheppys Organic Cider, and Baked Beans

I’ve just returned from a couple of weeks in Bali. Chilling at Titie’s with a Bintang, getting body-boarding burns, drinking catshit coffee and wondering if trichloroisocyanuric acid is safe to put in the pool. Which was all very nice, but for the last few days, I was missing cider. Bali thankfully, does have a couple of ciders, but what I really wanted was a pint of the proper hazy stuff.

And beans on toast.

Now I’ve unpacked, put the washing on and shaken the sand out of my suitcase, it would be a shame to waste the rest of the ‘holiday’ by staying sober, so I pop round the old Fresh and Wild and grab a bottle of Sheppy’s Organic Cider from Somerset. I decide that I will make a British welcome home meal and pair the cider with British beans on toast. Thankfully there’s always a couple of tins of beans in the cupboard, and I can’t be bothered to cook owt fancy, anyway.

I like to spice up my beans on toast by adding a little of the wide range of colourful powders I have in jars. Anything will do, really, chilli, chinese five spice, garam massala… Today I use a bit of black pepper, a drop of balsamic vinegar, and some dried green stuff, probably oregano. Whack it on a bit of toasted bread, you can use butter, and even sprinkle a bit of cheese on it, if you’re not on a diet. Voila! Beans a la Ciderman is served!

Taking the Sheppys from the fridge, I decant it into a British half-pint glass, patriotically robbed from a British pub. “It must have fallen into my bag”, as my nana would say, as she pulled out another set of theatre binoculars.

Sheppys is a straw-gold colour, filtered. A bit of natural fizz. Apparently, some apple varieties they put in are so old, they can’t identify them! Whatever happened to Mackintosh red, remember them? Anyway, looks good so far. I go to take a sniff.

I don’t know if it’s the excitement of my first proper cider in 3 weeks, or if it’s the jetlag, but I go and knock the bloody glass over. After 45 minutes of wiping cider off cd cases, I refill the glass. Good job I decided on the half-pint, or that would have been one of my 5 a day straight down the pan, and one very short blog post.

Finally. The smell is apply and sweet. It tastes just as good, which isn’t a surprise, as people are keep telling me that 90% of taste is smell. These are the people who make you hold your nose when you drink wine. Try it, but not in public.

A refreshing, medium sweet, half pint of 7% fruity goodness and I’m back home! I don’t even have to go to work tomorrow! I’m off to the pub.